Facebook has just told us what they’re up to
If you want to get an idea what Facebook is planning to release next, you should read this post they just published. Knowing this stuff will probably make you the marketing oracle within your circle.
Why? We’ve witnessed a number of different Facebook updates in recent months, and 99% of them fit in these 4 areas that the social network announced they plan to focus on:
- Privacy-based ads. Facebook’s goal is to process as little information as possible while still serving relevant ads.
- Product and business discovery. Facebook is doing several experiments where they’ll try to show you relevant ads based on things you have interacted with or indicated an interest in.
- Commerce. The pandemic caused a large percentage of people to shop online. Facebook is trying to adapt to this reality and make it easier for people to shop via its platform.
- Business tools in general. It’s not just about marketing, but business in general. Facebook stated they are working on making it easier to interact with customers, publish and schedule posts, and so on.
The past is a good predictor of the future: Knowing this, we could expect that a large portion of future Facebook business updates will also be in these 4 categories. And Stacked Marketer will be the first one to let you know about them.
MICROSOFT
Microsoft wants to make search ads more sexy
Text is boring. Microsoft has launched a new ad format: Multimedia ads.
Where they’ll appear: In the Bing search results. Either at the top or on the right side.
What will they look like: You can (kinda) infer by the name: they’ll allow you to use “rich media” i.e. buttons and images that are prominently featured. The mainline ads will have 4:1 aspect ratio, while the right rail ads aspect ratio will be 1.91:1.
Who’ll get access to it: For now, customers in the US, UK, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam markets. All other customers will get access in the next few weeks.
Video is coming soon: Microsoft has also announced “the road” ahead for multimedia ads, saying that video ads, multimedia ads for retail and the ability to use this format with the Microsoft Audience network is coming soon.
Exciting: Should you use this ad format? Yes, at least temporarily, in our opinion. Every new ad format goes through a phase where at the beginning, people are like “woah, I’ve never seen this, what’s that?” and click. Then, gradually, people go “meh” and banner blindness sets in.
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FROM THE CREW
Help us help kids
We’ve been running a new type of referral program over the last few weeks: And it’s not the kind where we give away MacBooks. (Although those types of giveaways will be back someday.)
Our current referral program is a little more important than MacBooks: For each new active subscriber to the newsletter, we’re donating $1 to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.
The St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital is a world leader on efforts to find, cure, and treat diseases that affect children. They’re doing great work, and we’re happy to be supporting them.
What do you need to do? Just refer a friend or two to the newsletter with this link.
We’ll donate one dollar for each active reader referred. And if you’ve already been referring people, everyone here at The Crew is sending a big Thank You your way.
COPYWRITING
How to find copywriting inspiration
If you write, having a swipe file to take inspiration is a lifesaver (and a moneymaker).
There’s an easy formula for writing ads:
- First, gather as much information you can about the offer. You want to know the what and why about the specific thing you’re promoting.
- Then, dig through a swipe file (a pile of inspiration, basically) to come up with ideas.
Much of the time, it’s hard to put something on the page without getting inspiration first.
Besides your own swipe file, there are a lot of resources to find proven ads. Especially sales letters.
And here are some you can constantly check to find new ideas:
Swiped.co: This is a huge collection of classic and modern ads. Some are proven ones (The ones marked as “Control”), others not. In both cases, this is a great place to get inspo.
Swipefile.com: This actually is Neville Medhora’s personal swipe file. It’s a collection of ads and sales letters, as well as interesting marketing and copywriting tweets and quotes.
Game Of Conversions: This is Csaba Borzási’s YouTube channel. He broke down 100 of the most successful sales letters in advertising history. It’s an easy way to inject into your brain some copywriting juice from real masters like David Deutsche, Gary Bencivenga, Eugene M. Schwartz, and all the rest.
This is the link to the 100 sales letter breakdown playlist. And this is the link to the folder containing all the ads.
Kick-Butt Controls: You have heard about Carline Anglade Cole only if you’re a copywriting nerd. She has sold millions of products in the alternative health market, and here she gathered her top-performing ads. What we like here is the way she uses short punchy headlines and images to grab attention. This is our personal favorite.
Good Email Copy: “Email copy from great companies.”. This is how this website describes itself. Great to find inspiration. (But it’s hard to know if the emails actually worked.)
Good Sales Emails: Similar to the previous one.
Sales pages folder: This folder gathers a lot of sales pages, squeeze pages, and more from modern brands. We are not sure about the owner, but props to them for putting together this resource.
The Gary Halbert Letter: A lot of proven sales letters are nothing else than a headline, an intro, and a huge list of key points in the form of bullets. For some inspiration, this is an issue from Gary Halbert’s newsletter containing a list of fascinations (or “catchy bullets” if you will) he personally gathered.
This post was originally posted in our Insights community. If you want to learn a little more about what that means, head here.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
TIKTOK: TikTok has an option where you can attach virtual gift cards to your ads. This person did an experiment for the 4th of July sale and got a 58 percent increase in ROAS thanks to it.
COPYWRITING: Making something clear is hard work. But, it’s also the number one essential job in copywriting. Joe Cunningham explains why in this ad breakdown.
INSTAGRAM: Instagram’s envy of TikTok is getting more obvious. Adam Mosseri has confirmed that, yes, the social network plans to get heavily into video.
PRODUCTIVITY: Loading your website can cost people money if they’re on a mobile plan. This handy tool tells you how much money people will lose if they load your website on various networks across the world.
SEO: Are you getting a fair wage as an SEO? This salary survey of over 2300 people should give you an idea.
BUSINESS: Online marketers and services dedicated to them are getting more and more attention from investors. The latest is Juni, who announced a $21.5M round.
TIKTOK: We think it’s crazy, but TikTok apparently doesn’t share our opinion. The social network has officially launched “TikTok resumes”, where you can tell potential employers why (not) hire you for a job.
BRAIN TEASER
What happens when frogs park illegally?
You can find the solution here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Smartphone wall of shame
Most people just complain when their politicians don’t do their job. This guy decided to do something about it.
Meet Dries Depoorter, a digital artist from Belgium. Dries made an AI that analyzes live streaming parliament videos and detects when a politician is looking at their phone. Then they post the video on Twitter, tagging the politician’s social media profile and telling them to pay more attention.
Ouch for the politicians. Yay for the public.
While we love what Dries is doing, we also think this would be a fun business opportunity: License this software to other countries so “The Flemish Scrollers” can turn into “California, NYC, or Berlin Scrollers”.